This Isn't VGC; a SSD Team Compilation and Retrospective

I was inspired by MajorBowman's SPL retrospective and thought I would do one of my own. Hi, I'm Ezrael, a new DOU'er, and I played for the Lanakila Nagas in SSD. We finished second, one game away from tiebreaks (and fixing one misplay of my own would have ensured that). I've written a team report before, but this time, I think i'll spare you all some of the details and just talk a little bit about the teams (after a prelude)

It was hard to play DOU for the Nagas, because they didn't draft anyone to help me teambuild and test. Most of my games were played with no testing prior, and some weeks it showed. Massive shoutouts to lady lumps who provided me with a substantial fraction of my teams, while not asking for any in return. He's the true mvp.

This was my first proper DOU game, and I had been thinking about Band Zygarde for a while (it was, in fact, the only idea i had had since i was drafted. i went to stax with it and we crafted this, after putting IFK on for balance, and Gengar to pick off the mons that were weakened by Band Zygarde. Stax suggested Zapdos to round it out, as it helped vs fini, gave me a place to put my Z move, and let me run Sub on my Kartana. This team is pretty standard, and the standardness of the tools let me play my game vs Emforbes. I wouldn't use this team going forward, as it's a pretty rough draft and the spreads are all kinda trash.

This time, instead of going through the trouble of building my own team w/ stax's help, I went straight to the source. The madman gave me this and i just loaded it up and played it. Most of this team is self explanatory: Manectric pivots around with Landorus, both reducing damage, while Victini removes berries and makes it so your opponent can't switch as easily into the rocks and damage you set up with Chansey. Kartana sweeps because it's broken, and Fini is also broken and does the damage w/ Kart. Chansey can work as a late game cleaner too. Physical Landorus is probably important to the team cause i think it would be missing some damage if it didn't have +2 Tec Rage and Eq potential.

I procrastinated building this stage too, so I went to AuraRayquaza for help. SMB seemed to use a bunch of Metagross and Gengar teams, so I wanted something with Charizard. Aray gave me Char but with Defog Koko without Volt Switch, which I wasn't ok with. I changed the Scrafty on the team to a Hitmontop so I could have Rapid Spin and EV'd Kartana to take a Shadow Ball from Gengar, to set up Tailwind better. Overall, this team was fine, but the one game I played with it was disgusting and ended on a really low note, so I haven't really looked at it again. This is probably the most aggressive team in my snake folder, so use it if you like aggression w/ Zard

I had absolutely no read on Lunar. I asked stax and he gave me this. Turns out (I didn't know this at the time) stax had already used this in SSD, so it's possible more information was revealed than I had thought, but it didn't matter. I played one practice game with the team and won, so I locked it in. I legit have no clue how this team works or does damage or anything. Don't ask me about this team, I don't understand it and don't endorse it, but i felt like I didn't have any options. Luck > skill in this case.

Bio had been counterteaming people and running a bunch of different stuff in the previous weeks. That made it really hard to counterteam him, so i decided to bring something new original and different. The idea of this team was to run Gengar Bulu, and the only way to run that felt like Scarf Bulu. Originally Zygarde was going to be Fightinium Z so the team could deal with Kartana, but since Bio hadn't used any Kartana I thought that adding Fight Z Kartana would be fine, especially as most of the Kartana I had seen weren't 252/252. Overall, my impression of this team is, again, colored by the loss. It should be fine, but assuming Gengar gets banned, not sure there's much point in using it.

This week I asked one of my friends what Pokemon I should use, and he said Volcanion. We then decided to go Lando and Kyu-B, and then went Tapu Fini, Manectric, Kartana. I showed these 6 to Emforbes, and he, like my friend had expected, told me to take the Volcanion off for Victini, because I was too weak to Tapu Koko. I also decided to use Z-Freeze Shock because AuraRayquaza had said it was really cool a few weeks back. Then I jacked stax's spreads from that earlier team he had given me, but made them all a little bit faster, to get the drop on him if he used those sets. The team works similarly to the earlier one, but it has less fat and more damage, and snarl as a good means of damage reduction. This team continues to hold up and I think it's a good choice.

Edu had been using a lot of Mega Gengar teams, so I thought that Mega Tyranitar would be a good way to punish him. I also didn't want to rely on Kartana, cause I felt that after dumpstering him with it last time, he would be a bit more prepared for Sub Kartana. Somehow, though, Sub Kartana ended up on my team anyways. Funny how that happens. I had a worse looking version of this, and then Emforbes just told me to run the 6 that EmbC had used earlier in the tournament, so I put my own sets on them and tried it out. Hp Fire on Cresselia was to blow up Kartana, cause the team had trouble dealing with it. Everything else is relatively standard, and lots of move choices were for extra coverage.

This week was when I started hitting my counterteaming stride. I had looked at Bowman's games and pretty much every single one of his teams had ~0 Fini checks. I decided to abuse that by bringing Tapu Fini. Marilli also suggested that I use Kyu-B, for offensive reasons. Looking at Bowman's teams, he didn't have many defensive switch ins to Kyu-B and also tended to have around 3 Ice weaknesses per team, so I wanted an aggressive set. I put together this from spreads I had already had in my builder to take advantage of Tapu Fini and Kyu-B as much as possible. In retrospect, I might have wanted to fit tailwind somewhere on the team, as that would have probably helped my mid and late game plans in the game that happened. Overall though, this team felt very strong and capable. The way to play it is as you would expect of a Gengar team, nothing odd here.

This team was one stax had given me a week or two earlier. I thought it had a good matchup against most of what SMB had brought previously, so I decided that it was fine to bring and that I was just going to focus on my play. I played a decent few practice games with the team to get ready, with a pretty good winrate. Unfortunately, I didn't practice for what he actually brought and ended up getting blown out by a few suboptimal plays. This team is designed to use Manectric Mew as a lead and then pivot into a midgame Zygarde in Tailwind sweep, into closing out the game through having an advantage and control with Incineroar. Sometimes 2nd and even 3rd Tailwind become possible because of Mew's insane defensive capability. This team also really abuses Stealth Rocks in a way that feels powerful. I used this team to qualify for the Gengar Suspect Test, going 38-2 and gave it to some VGC friends who also were able to qual. This team is very strong and I'll be looking at it a lot going forward, post Gengar ban.

I had absolutely no clue what to bring vs Bowman. SMB thought he was going to bring semiroom, especially after hard TR destroyed me in week 5. Looking at my other teams I had no direct trick room checks. So SMB and I (mostly him) put together a Meta Lele team. We tested it for a bit against M-Gengar and it did not feel comfortable in the slightest. I was running around like a chicken with its head cut off. 30 minutes before the game, stax gave me this and I just rolled with it. It looked good enough. The team is similar enough to my other ones that I don't feel like I need to really explain it. Chansey and Fini pulled out through a terrible early game to give me the W

This week I was sure that Biosci was also going to bring semiroom. I also felt that he didn't really have a ton of answers to Kyu-B on a lot of his teams. Further, there were very few weeks when he brought Stealth Rocks, so I thought I could punish him by going Charizard. I got on call with stax, and he told me that the only Charizard composition that he liked was a team he had given me a while ago (that had Xurkitree). I took that team and changed superficial elements, putting Heal Pulse on Chansey because I like it, going Seismic Toss > Psywave because I thought Bio wouldn't bring Mega Gengar, putting Scald and Taunt on Fini > Nature's Madness and Protect to cover for hard TR, and putting a weird Roost Kyu-B set that stax had suggested. Overall, my prep was great and this team feels amazing. It's played really well in all the games I've used it, and even though I've thrown Chansey endgames repeatedly, this is one of my favorite teams to come out of snake.

That's it! Congrats for making it this far. I had an excellent time in SSD this year. It would have been nice to win, but my 2nd place curse will continue, and we'll stop one game short of tiebreaks. We had an amazing season and an amazing comeback from a horrible start to stage 2, which again came down to the last game. Massive shoutouts to Void for deciding to draft me and having so much confidence in me, and Pohjis for being the best assman I could ask for. I really enjoyed being on the team and getting to meet a load of singles players. Watching craing ;_; work was a work of art. Every week he would come up with a whack ass team, get johnned till the last day, sleep through his match, wake up eventually and destroy his opponent. He really helped the team out consistently, offering teambuilding advice and practice games to everyone. SoulWind Was a great teammate as well. Even if he didn't win all his games, that was fine because of the presence and consistency he lent to the team. Even if it turned out he didn't win, we knew we could rely on him the whole way through. Sacri' was a delight to work with, always trying out new stuff when his fancy french program didn't get in the way. A very active chat member. Kushalos the chef came up with some crazy builds and really was accommodating to me. I'm still new to singles, and he helped me out getting used to NU and would help me ladder and so forth. Thanks for being in the Ghosting Tour with Pohjis, Kory, We Three Kings and me, it was a blast. Kory2600 did an excellent job bouncing between tiers and not getting too down on himself even after some demoralizing losses. Oh god can the shoutouts stop. They're almost done dw. Sharow-san was always really encouraging, and made me feel really loved on the team. Finally, MrAldoSam and the rest of the subs and so forth were great to have and boosted me up when I needed it.
Fuck Nails. Passionately.

If anyone has any questions about any of the teams or games, I'd be happy to answer them to the best of my ability! Just pm me or write on my wall or find me in the VGC room on Showdown. I'll be signing up for SPL, so I hope to get drafted and see you all there!